


The Child

by OldShrewsburyian



Category: Endeavour (TV), Inspector Morse & Related Fandoms, Inspector Morse (TV)
Genre: Child Death, Fainting, Gen, Male Friendship, Whiskey & Scotch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 22:14:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9789377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldShrewsburyian/pseuds/OldShrewsburyian
Summary: 1977: For four days, the whole of Oxford's police force has been searching for Mary Lapsley. Now, their search ends.





	

**Author's Note:**

> In response to a Morseverse prompt that reads simply: "Morse fainting: how and why is up to you." I've tagged this for both _Endeavour_ and _Inspector Morse_ as it draws on information from both shows, and takes place between them. We know from "Nocturne" how Max feels about dead children; "Second Time Around" gives us the information about the Mary Lapsley case. Whether you picture 70s!Morse as an older Shaun Evans, Sweeney-era John Thaw, or neither is of course up to you.
> 
> I know it may seem like a terrible violence against the character of Morse to have his syntax go to pieces, but I felt that the circumstances warranted it.

Max goes out to meet the mortuary van. Work has been slow and sordid of late—drunks and domestic violence, mostly—but this, this is a corpse he never wanted. The van backs up carefully, comes to a halt. To Max’s utter astonishment, Morse gets out of its cab. Morse, the necrophobe, in the mortuary van!

“Max!” Morse’s face is white in the headlamps; he is more unsteady on his feet than Max has ever seen him drunk. “Max, she—” When he pitches forward, Max is already reaching to catch him.

He is nearly bowled over—and what a picture _that_ would have been, thinks Max wryly. But he braces Morse under the arms, and lowers him to the ground as gently as he can. A career of handling dead weight has its advantages. The men in the mortuary van are moving silently and almost reverently about their work; they know how Max is about children.

“Leave her covered,” says Max, as the bier passes. He wishes he could find rage in this moment, but all he feels is a profound sadness. He supposes that he is getting old. _The heyday in the blood is cooled._

“Morse.” Awkwardly Max kneels on the gravel. “Morse.” He slaps his friend’s face, and finds it marked with drying salt.

“Max? Where—”

“At the station. Best get inside.” Max stands, gives Morse a hand to get up and his good side once he’s on his feet. Theirs is an ungainly, shambolic progress; tonight, at least, no one is likely to turn this into gossip. 

Max maneuvers them purposefully towards his office, getting the door open with his shoulder, as though he were leading a charge rather than a retreat. He is glad of his decision to shove Morse towards a chair en route to the filing cabinets, seeing the way the other man’s knees give under him. 

With a practiced tug, Max releases the bottom drawer that moves unwillingly along its track. The water he keeps for hysterics, the whisky for himself. He fills a mug half full and hands it to Morse.

“Drink this quickly.” Morse obeys instantly, docilely. Max reflects, not without smugness, that his bedside manner is wasted on his customers. Morse finishes the whisky with his head tilted back to let it roll down his throat. Only in handing the mug back to Max does he cough. 

“Good man. Now drink this slowly.” Max hands the mug back to Morse, filled with water this time. The whisky bottle he cradles against his body as he leans his weight against the desk. “Now.”

Morse looks up at him. Max can’t remember the last time he saw the man so desolate, or so transparent. 

“God, Max…”

Max bites back the comment that neither of them believes in God.

“She was so pathetically small,” says Morse, in a tone that seems to reproach himself for his own susceptibility to such things. “And so—so fragile. Dressed for a world where nothing bad could happen to her…. She was wearing lace socks. Lace socks, Max! with police photographers making a record of the precise angle of her limbs…”

“Finish your drink,” orders Max, and takes a swig from the whisky bottle. Morse’s teeth chatter against the edge of the mug.

“I found her, Max.” The words are hollow, half-voiced, unmistakable.

There is a knock on the door. “Dr. DeBryn—”

“In a minute!” bellows Max, and takes a strong pull on the bottle before splashing another measure into Morse’s empty mug.

“I found her,” repeats Morse, uncharacteristically ignoring the whisky, “and I stayed with her, while all the damned apparatus came, and worked, and went—everything running smoothly; everything according to plan; everything by the book. An eight-year-old girl, Max.”

Max rests a hand on his friend’s shoulder, and is silent for a long moment. “When was the last time you got any sleep?” Morse only grunts in answer. “Thought as much. You stay in here. Finish your whisky. Don’t finish the bottle. I’ll drive you home later.” 

“When you’re done with her?” The words come as Max’s hand is on the handle of the door.

“Yes,” says Max, meeting Morse’s eyes. “When I’m done with her.”

“Why do we do this job, Max?”

It is Max’s turn to grunt. “Some poor sod has to, Morse.”


End file.
